Harry Erwin Bratton Ault, journalist, editor, publisher, and political
activist, was born October 30, 1883, in Newport, Kentucky. He proudly claimed
to be “the first American-born Socialist born to an American-born
socialist.” At age 14, he moved with his family to the northern Puget
Sound area to join a socialist colony called Equality. This utopian settlement
attempted to be entirely self-sufficient, and its cooperative and humanitarian
vision had a deep and lasting influence on Ault. As a young man, he became
involved with various socialist newspapers and was co-founder of the Socialist
Amateur Press Association. His activity with reformist and revolutionary
newspapers of various types led him around the country and included stops in
Spokane, Washington; Lewiston, Idaho; and Toledo, Ohio. He eventually settled
in Seattle, where he continued his journalistic and political activities. In
1912, he achieved his life-long ambition of running a labor-owned newspaper
when the Central Labor Council elected him to edit its weekly organ, the
Seattle Union Record.

Under Ault’s leadership, the
Seattle Union Record expanded from a
weekly to a daily in 1918. By his own description, his duties as manager-editor
primarily consisted of mediating among individual members of the unions,
various competing unions, and unions and employers. Ault faced the continual
challenge of balancing various competing interests and ideologies between the
multifaceted labor movement and the demands of objective journalism and
political advocacy. For most of its ten-year existence as a daily, the
Seattle Union Record teetered at the brink
of bankruptcy. Its pro-labor policy cost it the advertising income which
normally supports a daily newspaper. Worsening the problem, the labor movement
in Seattle was in decline throughout the 1920s. The financial problems finally
became acute enough to force the
Seattle Union Record to cease publication.
The final issue appeared on February 18, 1928.

After the
Seattle Union Record dissolved, Ault went
into the commercial printing business and continued to write and publish
political pamphlets throughout the 1930s. In 1936 he entered the Democratic
primary for Washington’s First Congressional District. In a
nine-candidate field, Ault received only 3,427 votes; the primary’s
winner was Warren G. Magnuson, who polled 37,557. In 1938 Ault secured an
appointment as deputy United States marshal for Tacoma, Washington, and he
remained a U.S. marshal until his retirement in 1953. His wife noted that this
was the only time in their married life that they could count on a dependable
source of income. Harry E.B. Ault died in Seattle on January 5, 1961.

The Ault papers relate mainly to the management of the
Seattle Union Recordand Washington State
labor politics. They include business records, legal documents, correspondence,
speeches, questionnaires, lists, minutes, and political pamphlets. The
collection contains some interesting autobiographical fragments dealing with
the Equality colony and information on Ault’s congressional campaign in
1936. Correspondents include the American Federation of Labor, the Federated
Press, William Z. Foster, Saul Haas, James B. McNamara, Harvey O’Connor,
Terence V. Powderly, William M. Short, Anna Louise Strong, and the United Mine
Workers.

Arrangement

Acquisition Information

Minnie Ault, Harry’s widow, donated these papers in February
1962 and August 1965.

Processing Note

Numerous pamphlets were relocated from Accession No. 0562-001 to the
Pamphlet Collection of
the Special Collections division, University of Washington Libraries.

Related Materials

The
Seattle Union Record is available on
microfilm from the Microform and Newspaper Collections of the University of
Washington Libraries.

The
Seattle Union Record records, 1903-1927,
Accession No. 4312-001, housed in the Special Collections division, University
of Washington Libraries, consist of the newspaper’s financial and
subscription records.